So, in your opinion, solar activity has no tangible impact on our climate?

Only for very short amount of time, like days, maybe a week. but as for what we are experiencing due to global warming is permanent and escalating, I am afraid. and what worries the scientific community is the fact that effects of this manmade warming is accelerating each year.

Thanks for the detailed commnets ľ all this information could take time to sink in for me. Let me ask you this question ľ do you think there is a link between solar activity and the recent high-profile storm Sandy, for example? I think I do realise how difficult it is to collect accurate data and establish patterns in meteorology, so I am just looking for your informed opinion, rather than a waterproof statement.

NASA reported a strong solar flare observed on the night of October 22. The emissions, from what I inderstand, normally take a few days to reach the Earth, which is around the time when the weather people started talking about a storm system developing. Do you think this was a mere coincidence or do you think there is a connection?

You're welcome. No, I can say with very strong certainty that there was no correlation between recent solar activity and Sandy. The solar flare and storm development were purely coincidental. Hurricanes get their energy from warm ocean water, and develop when other conditions are right, such as a friendly atmospheric wind pattern around them. Those things were in place long before any solar flares.

Only for very short amount of time, like days, maybe a week. but as for what we are experiencing due to global warming is permanent and escalating, I am afraid. and what worries the scientific community is the fact that effects of this manmade warming is accelerating each year.

Permanent, not necessarily, but escalating definitely, and the outlook for the next 100 years or so is quite grim.

That would be a disaster for sure. But i would not lose sleep over it.
Try to use your energy in a better way , to focus on what we can control and do.
With climate change you can.
Innovation and efficiency can milden the impacts and buy us time.
Right now , we are headed down s...s creek.

I really wouldn't worry about the magnetic reversal. Here are a couple articles describing how little this reversal will affect us.

Quote:

The Earth's magnetic field will reverse.

Don't hold you breath. The last field reversal happened nearly 800,000 years ago. Fred Flintstone and our other ancestor cavemen survived. Geological evidence shows that the field has reversed its orientation tens of thousands of times over Earth history. Yet there is no definitive evidence that a magnetic field reversal has ever caused any mass extinction due to increased cosmic ray influx.

^^ Relax, people. I was being facetious about losing sleep over the solar magnetic field reversal. It has happened 5 times in my lifetime already -- the ill effects have been moderate, but tolerable, thus far. However, I have noticed that surviving 5+ of these solar magnetic pole reversals has aged me considerably.

I fully agree that it is an absurd notion that the solar pole reversal will result in a similar reversal for the Earth's magnetic field. The Earth's field has been diminishing slightly for a while now but there is no evidence that the field will reverse any time soon.

I have heard before that pole reversals on the Earth have not coincided with any mass extinctions -- this is old news. It does puzzle me however. It would seem to me that, in order for the poles to reverse, the field would have to go to zero at some point -- no net magnetic field -- for some period of time. If that notion is correct, the lack of a magnetic field should have some negative impact on living organisms since the field is protecting us (from cosmic rays and other nasties, if I recall correctly).
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^^ Relax, people. I was being facetious about losing sleep over the solar magnetic field reversal. It has happened 5 times in my lifetime already -- the ill effects have been moderate, but tolerable, thus far. However, I have noticed that surviving 5+ of these solar magnetic pole reversals has aged me considerably.

I fully agree that it is an absurd notion that the solar pole reversal will result in a similar reversal for the Earth's magnetic field. The Earth's field has been diminishing slightly for a while now but there is no evidence that the field will reverse any time soon.

I have heard before that pole reversals on the Earth have not coincided with any mass extinctions -- this is old news. It does puzzle me however. It would seem to me that, in order for the poles to reverse, the field would have to go to zero at some point -- no net magnetic field -- for some period of time. If that notion is correct, the lack of a magnetic field should have some negative impact on living organisms since the field is protecting us (from cosmic rays and other nasties, if I recall correctly).
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Solar activity and climate have gone in opposite directions the last 35 years .
At the same time global warming has taken place and escalated.
Good news is we can control CO2 emissions and stem it.